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Vol. LXII, No. 1
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Wednesday, January 2, 2008
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Vol. LXII, No. 1
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Wednesday, January 2, 2008
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The Princeton Public Library hosted the first Princeton Environmental Film Festival last January, providing focus for issues that continued to come to the fore throughout the year.
The second annual festival promises to continue the tradition with 18 film screenings and 37 speakers taking part in lectures and panel discussions over six days from today, at noon through Sunday, January 6, and on Saturday, January 12.
As before, the festival has been planned by student environmental groups from Princeton High School and John Witherspoon Middle School along with community organizations and the help of Teen Services Librarian Susan Conlon. It will again cover topics such as global warming, alternative energy sources, water conservation, organic food, community gardens, land use, and green buildings.
While the festival is global in scope, there will also be a strong local emphasis. It opens today, Wednesday, January 2, at noon, when Wendy Kaczerski of the Princeton Environmental Commission discusses the commission’s efforts to build a sustainable community. Ms. Kaczerski’s talk precedes two short films by Chris Bedford at 1 p.m.: What Will We Eat? and The Organic Opportunity. Mr. Bedford will discuss his work afterwards and then a panel of speakers from local eateries will weigh in on the subject of growing local in the Garden State, at 3:30 p.m., followed by a screening and discussion of Mr. Bedford’s film, The Next Industrial Revolution.
Among other locally-inspired events are presentations featuring Marty Johnson, president of Isles, Inc. in Trenton; Mike Strizki, founding member of the Hopewell Project; Quark Park architect Kevin Wilkes and garden artist Peter Soderman; Linda J. Mead, executive director of the D&R Greenway Land Trust; and Steve Hiltner of the Friends of Princeton Open Space.
On Thursday, January 3, at noon, David Wann’s film Designing a Great Neighborhood: Behind the Scenes at Holiday documents the goal to create a zero-emissions neighborhood in Colorado. It will be followed at 1 p.m. by a discussion of “Transforming the Landscape with Green Buildings.”
Also on Thursday, at 4 p.m., Mr. Johnson, will introduce Isles: Self-Reliant Homes in Sustainable Communities and discuss the group’s work with a special focus on healthy homes, lead poisoning prevention, energy efficiency, community gardening, open space redevelopment, exercise and nutrition.
Friday’s events include a panel discussion, “Edible Gardens: Princeton Public Schools are Growing Gardens for their Cafeterias, Classrooms, and the Community,” at noon, followed by the global-warming primer Too Hot Not Too Handle, at 2 p.m.
Jeff Barrie’s plan for shifting America’s energy paradigm towards conservation and renewable power, Kilowatt Ours, will be screened on Friday, at 4 p.m., followed by a talk by Mr. Strizki, whose 3,000-square-foot house is run completely independently of the local power grid, using solar panels and a hydrogen storage system.
Everything’s Cool, which chronicles the efforts of a group of global-warming messengers on a high stakes quest to create the political will to move the United States from its reliance on fossil fuels, will wrap up the Friday events at 7 p.m. The screening will be followed by a discussion between writer Judith Helfand and producer Adam Wolfensohn.
The festival starts early on Saturday, January 5, with the author talks: “From Crisis to Innovation: Lessons from the Universe for Today” by Jennifer Morgan, at 10 a.m., followed by “Growing up Green,” a discussion of the best environmental books for children and teens by Linda Oatman High and John Morano, at 11 a.m.
At noon, New Jersey resident, canoeist, and environmentalist Margo Pellegrino will present a talk and presentation “Miami2Maine: An Ocean Conservation Campaign” about her 11-week expedition to paddle some 2,000 miles north on the Atlantic Coastline in an effort to raise awareness about problems threatening the world’s oceans.
The Water Front, Liz Miller’s film about a town struggling to keep water from becoming privatized, will be screened at 2 p.m., followed by a discussion moderated by Kimberly K. Smith of Princeton University on class, race, and inequality and environmental problems facing metropolitan areas. At 4 p.m. Laura Dunn’s The Unforseen about a Texas development that threatens a local natural treasure, will be shown, with a post-sceening discussion led by Linda J. Mead, executive director of the D&R Greenway Land Trust.
Sunday, January 6, will feature two screenings and discussions. Two Square Miles, at 1:30 p.m., tracks the conflicts that unfold as a multinational coal-fired cement plant threatens to reshape the small community on the banks of the Hudson River. The screening will be followed by Q&A with Barbara Ettinger, director/producer; Sven Huseby, producer; Sam Pratt, founder, Friends of Hudson; and Ben Kalina, associate producer.
Also on Sunday, at 4 p.m., Chris Allen’s film “Quark Park,” which chronicles the art collaborations of architect Kevin Wilkes and garden artist Peter Soderman on a vacant lot in Princeton, will be screened, followed by a discussion with Mr. Allen, Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Soderman.
The festival wraps up on Saturday, January 12. The day begins at 11 a.m. with the first of three films: Allison Byrne’s TrashIn in the Big Apple about landfilling food; followed at noon by Jeremy Kaller’s The Recyclergy, about the recycling movement pioneers; and a 1 p.m. screening of Eric Flagg’s Gimme Green about the American obsession with the residential lawn. At 1:30 p.m., Steve Hiltner, Natural Resources Manager for Friends of Princeton Open Space will present the discussion “Restoring Native Habitats in Princeton Preserves and Backyards.”
The festival finishes off with three more films. NJN Public Television’s look about the Greater Newark Conservancy. A Greener, Greater Newark will be screened at 2:30 p.m., followed by a discussion with producer Bob Szuter and Robin Dougherty, executive director of the Greater Newark Conservancy. The 30-minute film examines grass-roots efforts of the Greater Newark Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land and how their actions produce long-term benefits reaching far beyond physical landscape improvement. Jennifer Baichwal’s portrait of photographer Edward Burtynsky, Manufactured Landscapes, at 4 p.m. The festival concludes with a screening of King Corn at 7 p.m., a film by Aaron Woolf, Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.
All of the film screenings and related talks are free, open to all ages, and held in the library’s first floor Community Room. For more information, call (609) 924-9529, or visit www.princetonlibrary.org.